RightScale Blog - Cloud Costshttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/tag/cloud-costs-0
enGet Showback Reporting for AWS, Azure and More Cloudshttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/get-showback-reporting-aws-azure-and-more-clouds
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Last month we released a brand-new <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-analytics" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>&nbsp;dashboard for <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/see-all-your-aws-costs">managing all your AWS costs</a>&nbsp;as well as your instance costs for Azure, Google, SoftLayer, OpenStack, and VMware and other public and private clouds. Today we are releasing a new feature that will enable showback reporting for cloud costs across your enterprise.<br><br>Now when you connect multiple cloud accounts to your RightScale accounts, you can tag these accounts with the information you need to report on how much was spent on which cloud resources and by whom. For example, by tagging your RightScale accounts with the names of business units, groups, or departments, you will be able to see showback broken out by those tag names when you export your monthly cost report.</p><p>Watch this short 3.5-minute demo of how to use tags and export your showback data into CSV format:<br><br><iframe allowfullscreen="" allowtransparency="true" class="wistia_embed" mozallowfullscreen="" msallowfullscreen="" name="wistia_embed" oallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="//fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/0aa89bw0jo" webkitallowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="377" width="600"></iframe></p><p>For an easier way to manage all your cloud costs and provide showback across your enterprise, <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">sign up for a free trial of RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>.<br>&nbsp;</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-embed_ad" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Thu, 25 Jun 2015 16:51:53 +0000Hassan Hosseini470 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/get-showback-reporting-aws-azure-and-more-clouds#commentsGoogle vs. AWS Pricing: Google Cuts Are First of 2015http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-vs-aws-pricing-google-cuts-are-first-2015
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Seven months after its last price cut on compute power for the cloud, Google is making good on its promise to drive cloud prices down on Google Compute Engine (GCE) at the rate of Moore’s Law. AWS did not match last year’s price cuts by Google, but instead reduced prices on Reserved Instances this past December. This week's price cut by Google is another strategic move in the Google vs. AWS pricing battle that ultimately benefits cloud consumers.<br><br>Google now has a significantly lower cost in standard compute instances vs. AWS (m3) unless you are willing to commit to pay upfront for 3-Year Reserved Instances (RIs). However, committing to a three-year time period for AWS RIs raises the risk that future price cuts will wipe out some of your expected savings if Google continues to reduce prices each year. The picture for high-memory and high-CPU VMs is more mixed, depending on your requirements and purchase options. &nbsp;<br><br>The price comparisons below are based on Linux in AWS US-East and Google in the U.S.</p><p><img alt="Google vs. AWS Pricing On-Demand" class="media-image" height="587" style="width: 750px; height: 415px;" width="1061" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20vs.%20AWS%20Pricing%20On-Demand.png" /><br><br><br><img alt="Google New Pricing vs. AWS Per Hour" class="media-image" height="506" style="width: 750px; height: 367px;" width="1035" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20New%20Pricing%20vs.%20AWS%20Per%20Hour.png" /><br><br>For high-memory VMs, we compared cost per GB of RAM in addition to total cost since AWS high-memory instances (r3) offer between 15 and 20 percent more memory. Google offers a lower per-hour price (unless you buy 3-Year RIs from AWS), but when calculated as cost per GB of RAM, AWS gains a price advantage for 1-Year All Upfront RIs and 3-Year RIs.<br><br>High-CPU instances for Google and AWS (c3) have the same number of CPU cores, but the processors are different and AWS offers more than double the memory. While AWS specifies the processor used (2.8 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2), Google notes on its website that the processor could be one of three types (2.6GHz Intel Xeon E5 (Sandy Bridge), 2.5GHz Intel Xeon E5 v2 (Ivy Bridge), or 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon E5 v3 (Haswell) depending on the zone. Hence, it’s difficult to do an apples-to-apples “per unit of compute power” comparison. As a result, we chose the admittedly less-satisfying approach of looking at total hourly costs as well as costs per GB of RAM (given the differences in RAM specs between the two clouds). Google offers a lower per-hour cost (except when compared to AWS 3-Year RIs) but AWS c3 instances offer a lower price per GB of RAM for all purchase options. AWS c4 instance types offer an even faster processor at a nominally higher cost, so these instances may provide an even higher price-performance benefit.<br><br><img alt="Google New Pricing vs. AWS Per GB Hour." class="media-image" height="509" style="width: 750px; height: 371px;" width="1029" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20New%20Pricing%20vs.%20AWS%20Per%20GB%20Hour.png" /><br><br>Google’s sustained-use discounts and AWS RIs are not a direct apples-to-apples comparison. AWS RIs require a proactive decision, a contractual commitment, and potentially some upfront payment, while Google’s sustained-use discount is automatically applied. Google has shared its “typical” hourly rates based on the average usage as calculated over all Google Compute Engine users. For those of you with a “do nothing” approach to RIs, Google can offer additional savings over AWS on-demand instances without requiring any action from you. Your individual “typical” per-hour cost will vary depending on the percentage of a month that you are running instances.</p><p><img alt="Google Typical vs. AWS On-Demand Pricing" class="media-image" height="599" style="width: 750px; height: 425px;" width="1057" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Typical%20vs.%20AWS%20On-Demand%20Pricing.png" /><br><br>To cut your AWS bills, consider purchasing AWS RIs. AWS 1-Year No Upfront RIs can drive costs lower than Google on a per-GB of RAM basis for high-CPU instances, while changing to an upfront payment will drop costs lower than Google for high-memory instances as well.<br><img alt="Google 100 Percent Sustained Use vs AWS 1 Year No Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="598" style="width: 750px; height: 421px;" width="1065" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20100%20Percent%20Sustained%20use%20vs%20AWS%201%20Year%20No%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing.png" /><br><br><img alt="Google 100 Percent Sustained Use Pricing vs. AWS 1 Year All Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="595" style="width: 750px; height: 419px;" width="1065" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20100%20Percent%20Sustained%20Use%20Pricing%20vs.%20AWS%201%20Year%20All%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing.png" /><br><br>If you’re willing to go all-in with AWS, choosing 3-Year RIs with the All Upfront payment option can get you lower prices than Google across the board, but continued price cuts by Google will eat into the realized savings.<br><br><img alt="Google 100 Percent Sustained Use Pricing vs. AWS 3 Year All Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="588" style="width: 750px; height: 415px;" width="1063" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20100%20Percent%20Sustained%20Use%20Pricing%20vs.%20AWS%203%20Year%20All%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing.png" /><br><br>Over the past nine&nbsp;months, AWS seems to be shifting its focus to differentiate based on features vs. costs. However, it’s been more than&nbsp;a year since we’ve seen significant across-the-board reductions in compute prices from AWS. It would be surprising if AWS didn’t announce price cuts sometime in 2015, but it’s yet to be seen whether the&nbsp;company&nbsp;will try to undercut Google prices or go for a “close enough” strategy. At some point, Google’s price advantages may cause more cloud users to sit up and take notice.<br><br>The <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/lp/2015-state-of-the-cloud-report?campaign=701700000012UP6" target="_blank">RightScale 2015 State of the Cloud Report</a> found that most enterprises are implementing multi-cloud strategies and IT teams are seeking to broker a variety of cloud services. The real loser here may be internal data centers, given that Google intends to continue the drive to lower cloud prices.<br><br>If you want to analyze the impact of cloud prices on your own cloud spend, get a free trial of <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial?campaign=701700000010sUz" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a> to analyze your past cloud usage and create scenarios to forecast future spend with the latest prices on Google, AWS, and other clouds.<br>&nbsp;</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-embed_ad" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p><br><br>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Tue, 19 May 2015 22:35:27 +0000Kim Weins468 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-vs-aws-pricing-google-cuts-are-first-2015#commentsSee All Your AWS Costshttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/see-all-your-aws-costs
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Effective cloud cost management requires not only knowing <em>what</em> you spend on compute, storage, and networking, but also <em>where</em> you are spending it and <em>who</em> is spending it. We created <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-analytics" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a> to help enterprises visualize, forecast, and optimize costs for deployments that span public clouds, private clouds, and virtualized environments.<br><br>Managing complex multi-cloud deployments to support multiple lines of business across the enterprise is a common use case among our customers, and one that illustrates the importance of showback and chargeback. With the release of the new Cloud Analytics dashboard this week, you can see all of your associated AWS costs such as compute, storage, networking, and any other service you use in AWS — as well as compute costs for other public and private clouds. (We will be adding costs for Azure storage and networking soon.) You can now easily analyze and report on showback and chargeback for lines of business, departments, and projects.</p><p style="padding: 0 40px;"><span style="font-size:20px;">"As a CIO, RightScale Cloud Analytics is just the sort of thing that I need to understand and reduce cloud costs. We look forward to using it to set expectations with C-level management and our board of directors on our future operating costs of private, hybrid, and public clouds."</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:20px;">Tim Jones, CIO of MoneySuperMarket</span></p><p>To get started, simply connect your cloud or clouds to RightScale and gain visibility into how much each account is spending on each resource, including storage, network, and compute. Use the account structure to achieve showback at the account level:<br><br><img alt="AWS Costs in RightScale Cloud Analytics Dashboard" class="media-image" height="990" style="width: 750px; height: 371px;" width="1999" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/AWS%20Costs%20in%20RightScale%20Cloud%20Analytics%20Dashboard.png" /><br><br><br><strong><span style="font-size:18px;">How to Effectively Manage Your Cloud Costs</span></strong></p><p>Cloud Analytics combines your historical usage with sophisticated forecasting to help you manage cloud costs across major public and private clouds and virtualized environments. Cloud Analytics also integrates with <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-management" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Management</a> to allow you to take action on your insights and optimize your cloud usage.<br><br>As soon as you connect to any public or private cloud, RightScale discovers all instances that are running and gives you the ability to see such details as instance ID, start time, end time, state, and duration, among others, all in a single view. Slice and dice by any number of criteria including tags, application, instance type, region, instance state, and more to see the details on what you are spending. If you find instances that are not optimized — or that are stuck in booting or terminating — you can click the instance ID and immediately take action to reduce your costs.<br><br>For an effective way to visualize, forecast, and optimize your cloud costs, <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial?campaign=701700000010sUz" target="_blank">get a free trial of RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>.</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-embed_ad" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p><br>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Thu, 30 Apr 2015 12:57:25 +0000Hassan Hosseini465 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/see-all-your-aws-costs#commentsAWS vs Google Pricing: Decoding the New AWS RI Modelhttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/aws-vs-google-pricing-decoding-new-aws-ri-model
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em><strong>Update: May 19, 2015:</strong></em> <em>Google cut prices on compute resources again this week. We've got t<a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-vs-aws-pricing-google-cuts-are-first-2015">he latest analysis on Google vs. AWS pricing</a> along with price comparision charts.</em></p><p><em>Update December 5, 2014: In the 1-Year Partial Upfront RI and the 1-Year All Upfront RI charts, we corrected the plus and minus signs on the percentages for consistency.</em></p><p><em>Update December 3, 2014: We changed the first chart below to reflect the correct percentage for the No Upfront Savings for 1-Year RIs, which is 20-50 percent rather than 20-43 percent as originally published.</em></p><p>AWS today announced a <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/reserved-instances/" target="_blank">new Reserved Instance (RI) pricing model</a> in an effort to simplify RI purchases and better match the way enterprise customers want to buy.<br><br>The new model eliminates the previous Light, Medium, and Heavy distinctions and instead provides three options that increase the discount as customers pay more upfront.<br>&nbsp;<br>Below is a summary of the new RI types:<br><img alt="AWS December 2014 RI Model Pricing Changes" class="media-image" height="340" style="width: 750px; height: 386px;" width="660" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/AWS%20December%202014%20RI%20Model%20Pricing%20Changes_0.png" /><br><br>The ranges for savings varies greatly across different regions as well as operating system. With all of the new RI types, the customer is billed for a full 24 hours a day every day of the year, regardless of whether the RI is used or not. This is comparable to the old-style Heavy RIs.<br>&nbsp;<br><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Google vs AWS Pricing Comparison</strong></span><br><br>With the announcement of this new AWS RI pricing model, we’ve updated our AWS vs Google pricing comparisons. The change in AWS RIs does not affect on-demand prices, so <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-has-cut-cloud-prices-38-percent-2014-google-vs-aws-pricing">Google continues to offer a lower cost since reducing its prices in October 2014</a>.<br><br>We compared Google Sustained Use discounts to AWS No Upfront RIs. These options represent the closest to an apples-to-apples comparison, since the Google Sustained Use discount does not require any upfront payment. All prices are based on Linux instances in the US East region. Keep in mind that this is a straight price comparison of similar instances. The specific performance of each instance type may vary.<br><br>In this comparison, Google has a price advantage ranging from 11 to 30 percent. However, AWS also offers more memory on the high-memory instances and twice the memory on the high-CPU instances, along with an SSD, that balances Google’s lower price. Depending on workload, the high-CPU c3 series from AWS could provide a better price/performance option.<br><br>This also does not take into account potential additional volume discounts for AWS RIs, which start at 5 percent when the annual value of RIs reaches $500K, and tier up to 10 percent when the annual value of RIs reaches $4 million, with higher tiers available on a negotiated basis. It is also important to note that the Google Sustained Use discounts require no commitment at all, while the AWS No Upfront RI is still a commitment to use for a one-year term.</p><p><img alt="Google Sustained-Use vs. AWS 1-Year No Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="495" style="width: 750px; height: 444px;" width="836" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Sustained-Use%20vs.%20AWS%201-Year%20No%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing%20.png" /><br><br>AWS users may also consider using Spot Instances for certain workloads, which can be substantially cheaper, or buying RIs via the RI Marketplace. AWS describes part of the value of RIs as providing a “capacity reservation.” Google, in comparison, states that it is responsible for ensuring that capacity is sufficient.<br><br>We next compared Google Sustained Use discounts to AWS Partial Upfront RIs and AWS All Upfront RIs. In these cases, AWS offers a lower price. However, customers will also need to consider the financial tradeoffs of paying part or all of the costs upfront. Excluding this additional “cost of capital,” AWS costs range from 1 to 9 percent lower for the standard and high-memory instance families. However, Google’s cost is lower by up to 14 percent in the high-CPU instance family.<br><br><img alt="Google Sustained-Use vs. AWS 1-Year Partial Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="501" style="width: 750px; height: 429px;" width="876" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Sustained-Use%20vs.%20AWS%201-Year%20Partial%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing_0.png" /><br><br><br><img alt="Google Sustained-Use vs. AWS 1-Year All Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="508" style="width: 750px; height: 454px;" width="840" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Sustained-Use%20vs.%20AWS%201-Year%20All%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing_0.png" /><br><br>AWS has offered even larger discounts for a three-year term on RIs. However, during that three-year term, customers should consider that there may be significant price cuts in on-demand usage as well as the launch of new, more powerful instance types. These may eat into the projected savings of AWS over the Google Sustained-Use model.</p><p><img alt="Google Sustained-Use vs. AWS 3-Year Partial Upfront Reserved Instance Pricing" class="media-image" height="497" style="width: 750px; height: 428px;" width="871" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Sustained-Use%20vs.%20AWS%203-Year%20Partial%20Upfront%20Reserved%20Instance%20Pricing.png" /><br><br>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Decoding AWS RIs</strong></span></p><p>While we provide a comparison of Google and AWS cloud pricing, for some AWS users the choice is not about price but rather about which type of AWS instance to buy. Although the RI discount levels calculated by AWS are based on running an instance 100 percent of the time over the term of the RI, it is still possible to realize savings for an instance that doesn’t run 100 percent of the time. It’s important to do a breakeven analysis to determine the amount of time an instance must be used before you break even vs on-demand. &nbsp;After that breakeven point, you start to realize savings for the remainder of the RI term.<br><br><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Breakeven Analysis</strong></span></p><p>The breakeven point for an RI will depend on the discount level. For example, if a No Upfront RI for a particular instance type in a particular region offers a 25 percent discount for a 1-year term, then you will realize some savings as long as you use that RI for at least 75 percent of the year (or at least 9 months). In order to realize the full 25 percent savings, you need to use that RI for the entire year.<br><br>We analyzed breakeven points for RIs on m3.mediums. For 1-year RIs, the breakeven point ranged from 222 days (61 percent of the term) for All Upfront RIs to 261 days (72 percent of the term) for No Upfront RIs. Notably for this particular instance, the breakeven point for All Upfront RIs was only four days shorter than Partial Upfront RIs.<br><br><img alt="Breakeven Analysis for m3.medium for AWS 1-Year RIs" class="media-image" height="524" style="width: 750px; height: 460px;" width="854" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Breakeven%20Analysis%20for%20m3.medium%20for%20AWS%201-Year%20RIs.png" /><br><br>We also analyzed breakeven points for 3-year RIs for m3.medium. All Upfront RIs required only 409 days (37 percent of the term) to breakeven while Partial Upfront RIs required 435 days (40 percent of the term) to breakeven. The 3-year RIs offer a significantly faster breakeven as a percentage of the 3-year term. This helps to mitigate the risk from changes in on-demand prices, from the introduction of new higher-power instance types, or from changes in a customer’s cloud usage — all of which could decrease the realized discount over the longer 3-year commitment.<br><br><img alt="Breakeven Analysis for m3.medium for AWS 3-Year RIs " class="media-image" height="520" style="width: 750px; height: 456px;" width="856" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Breakeven%20Analysis%20for%20m3.medium%20for%20AWS%203-Year%20RIs%20.png" /><br><br><br><br><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Additional Considerations</strong></span></p><p>Assuming that your breakeven analysis shows that an RI purchase makes sense, you then need to determine which type of RI to buy. Your company will likely use several additional factors that might include your cost of capital, liquidity requirements, capitalization options, and interest rates to determine whether you are better off paying for an All Upfront RI to secure the largest discount or paying month-by-month for a No Upfront RI.<br><br>In some cases, that decision might also depend on other business factors as well. For example, large enterprises might have money budgeted in a particular month, quarter, or year that needs to be used in that time period. Conversely, a startup might want to conserve cash in anticipation of future fundraising.<br><br><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Considering Future Price Reductions</strong></span></p><p>As you decide whether an RI purchase makes financial sense, remember that purchasing an RI might exclude you from future price reductions that apply only to on-demand instances. For example, if you purchase a 1-year RI that offers a savings of 10 percent over on-demand, and if after half a year the on-demand price goes down by 20 percent, you are now no further ahead than if you had stayed with on-demand pricing. While no one can predict how much cloud prices will decrease over the year, given past history, it’s almost certain that they will decrease.<br><br><strong><span style="font-size:16px;">Other Tips on AWS RIs</span></strong></p><p>It’s also important to remember a few things about how AWS RIs work. You purchase an RI for a particular instance type, availability zone (AZ), and operating system. You can request to modify your RIs to move between AZs (not regions) or to change instance sizes in the same family. You can also modify your RIs between EC2 Classic and EC2 VPC. Requests to modify are processed by AWS as soon as possible based on available capacity.<br><br>You can continue to use the old-style RIs over their term, and you can combine old-style RIs with these newer RIs. Your AWS bill will be calculated by applying the lowest cost RI first in order to maximize savings.<br><br><span style="font-size:16px;"><strong>Wrapup</strong></span></p><p>Cloud prices from AWS and other public cloud providers will continue to drop, and cloud pricing models will continue to evolve for the foreseeable future. Although AWS has simplified RI prices with this announcement, there are still many factors that companies will need to take into account when deciding how to purchase cloud compute resources. The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rightscale.com/lp/2014-state-of-the-cloud-report" target="_blank">RightScale 2014 State of the Cloud Report</a> found that most enterprises are implementing multi-cloud strategies. IT teams want to <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/lp/it-as-a-cloud-services-broker-white-paper" target="_blank">broker multiple public and private cloud services</a> for their organizations and acquire the best cloud services at the lowest possible cost. Savvy cloud brokers can leverage myriad discounting options to optimize, and ultimately reduce, their infrastructure spend.<br><br>If you want to analyze the impact of cloud prices on your own cloud spend, get a free trial of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a> to analyze your past cloud usage and create scenarios to forecast future spend on AWS, Azure, Google, and other clouds.</p><p>For more on understanding the new AWS RI options and comparing them to old-style RIs plus details on the discounting options from Google and other cloud providers, watch the on-demand webinar, <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/webinars/decoding-the-new-aws-reserved-instances" target="_blank">Decoding the New AWS Reserved Instances: What It Means for Cloud Pricing</a>.</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-embed_ad" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Tue, 02 Dec 2014 21:30:35 +0000Hassan Hosseini430 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/aws-vs-google-pricing-decoding-new-aws-ri-model#commentsGoogle Has Cut Cloud Prices 38 Percent in 2014: Google vs AWS Pricinghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-has-cut-cloud-prices-38-percent-2014-google-vs-aws-pricing
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p><em><strong>Update May 19, 2015:</strong> Google cut prices on compute resources again this week. We've got the <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-vs-aws-pricing-google-cuts-are-first-2015">latest analysis on Google vs. AWS pricing along with price comparision charts</a>.</em></p><p>Just six months after large cloud price cuts from Google and AWS, Google has cut prices for compute resources by ten percent across the board, making good on its promise to drive cloud prices down further. This makes a cumulative reduction of 38 percent in Google Compute Engine&nbsp;(GCE) compute prices since the beginning of the year.<br><br>It is highly likely that AWS has price cuts of its own coming soon. This move by Google is just six weeks before AWS re:Invent, the AWS user conference that drew 9,000 attendees to Las Vegas last year. For the past two years, AWS has announced a price cut during re:Invent, so cloud watchers can debate whether AWS will move up any planned pricing changes or wait to make a big splash during its big event.<br><br>After these price cuts, GCE is the low-price leader for on-demand instances. In the case of longer-term usage, GCE sustained-use discounts undercut AWS 1-year reserved instances (RIs) for high-CPU instances, while AWS 1-year RIs offers lower prices for standard- and high-memory instances. Customers committing to AWS 3-year RIs will still see a significant cost benefit compared to&nbsp;GCE. It is important to note that the GCE sustained-use discounts and AWS RIs are not a direct apples-to-apples comparison, since AWS RIs require an upfront commitment, and RI hourly pricing may or may not follow future price cuts in AWS on-demand pricing.<br><br>In addition, AWS also offers twice the memory on the high-CPU instances, along with an SSD, that balances Google’s lower price. Depending on workload, the highcpu c3 series from AWS could provide a better price/performance option.<br><br>The price comparisons in the charts below are based on Linux in AWS US-East and Google in the U.S.:</p><p><img alt="Google vs AWS On Deamnd Pricing Oct 2014" class="media-image" height="518" style="width: 750px; height: 441px;" width="881" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20vs%20AWS%20On-Demand%20Pricing%20Oct%202014.png" /><br>&nbsp;<br><br><img alt="Google Sustained Use vs AWS 1 Year Heavy RIs Pricing Oct 2104" class="media-image" height="521" style="width: 750px; height: 451px;" width="866" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Sustained%20use%20vs%20AWS%201%20Year%20Heavy%20RI%20Pricing%20Oct%202014.png" /><br><br><br><img alt="Google Sustained Use vs AWS 3 Year Heavy RIs Pricing Oct 2014" class="media-image" height="513" style="width: 750px; height: 444px;" width="866" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Google%20Sustained%20Use%20vs%20AWS%203%20Year%20Heavy%20RI%20Oct%202014.png" /></p><p>Once again, CIOs and CFOs are going to have to take a hard look to costs of internal data centers, given that there is no slowing in the march toward lower cloud prices. The <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/lp/2014-state-of-the-cloud-report" target="_blank">RightScale 2014 State of the Cloud Report</a> found that most enterprises are implementing multi-cloud strategies that can enable them to pick and choose cloud providers based on price, features, and other factors.<br><br>Accurately forecasting cloud usage and evaluating the myriad cloud pricing options is quickly becoming a must-have skill for IT finance practitioners. If you want to analyze the impact of cloud prices on your own cloud spend, get a free trial of <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a> to analyze your past cloud usage and create scenarios to forecast future spend with the latest prices on Google, AWS, and other clouds.<br><br><img alt="" class="media-image" height="543" width="712" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Analytics%20Scenario%20Builder_0.png" /></p><p><span style="font-size:12px;"><em>With RightScale Cloud Analytics you can optimize your cloud costs by running scenarios to compare different instance sizes, reserved instances,<br>and alternate clouds.</em></span></p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-embed_ad" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p><br>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 20:37:12 +0000Hassan Hosseini425 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/google-has-cut-cloud-prices-38-percent-2014-google-vs-aws-pricing#commentsAccurately Predict Cloud Costs with 3-Year Forecastinghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/accurately-predict-cloud-costs-3-year-forecasting
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>In a previous blog post on <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/avoid-bill-shock-automated-cloud-cost-reports">avoiding cloud bill shock</a>, I shared how to proactively keep tabs on your cloud costs&nbsp;by using the automated Scheduled Reports in <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-analytics">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>. You can choose to have these reports emailed daily, weekly, and monthly to yourself and to anyone else in your organization, including your line-of-business managers and CFO. Cloud Analytics customer Joe Emison, CTO at BuildFax, says that the “automated emails give me the right level of detail to help me understand quickly whether I am on budget and identify any unexpected cloud usage.”<br><br>The ability to be alerted and quickly take action if costs are increasing unexpectedly is one of the many needs that Cloud Analytics addresses. Another unique feature of Cloud Analytics is Scenario Builder, a forecasting simulation engine that helps you predict your future cloud costs.<br><br><strong><span style="font-size:18px;">Stay on Budget by Tracking Against Your Forecasted Cloud Costs</span></strong><br>Scenario Builder enables you to build three-year cost forecasts to assess the costs of growth, reserved instances, and various clouds and instance types. With three-year forecasts, you can make more informed decisions about your options and your potential cost savings.<br><br>To make it more convenient for you to keep track of your forecasted spend, you can now include your forecasts in your Scheduled Reports. You can set your automated Scheduled Reports to email you such data as:</p><ul><li>Previous month’s total cost for particular data that you define.</li><li>Previous month’s average daily spend.</li><li>Month-to-date average daily spend.</li><li>Forecasted costs through the end of the month.</li></ul><p>In the example below where I am comparing month-over-month instance costs, you can see that the total instance cost has decreased by 42 percent in March vs. February because the average number of instances in use has decreased by 47 percent:<br><br><img alt="Cloud Cost Forecasting Monthly Report" class="media-image" height="713" style="width: 750px; height: 755px;" width="708" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Cost%20Forecasting%20Monthly%20Report.png" /><br><br>In the following example of a Scheduled Report, you can clearly see the correlation between changes that you make to your environment and the increase (or decrease as the case could be) in your cloud costs:</p><p><img alt="Cloud Cost Report from Cloud Analytics" class="media-image" height="236" style="width: 750px; height: 296px;" width="598" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Cost%20Report%20from%20Cloud%20Analytics.png" /><br><br>With the use of Scheduled Reports like this one, you can make an informed decision and choose to take action if your forecasted spend is tracking above budget for the month.<br><br>To more easily forecast your future cloud costs and track them against your budgeted spend,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">get a free trial of RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>.</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-block_5" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Thu, 07 Aug 2014 20:55:17 +0000Hassan Hosseini405 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/accurately-predict-cloud-costs-3-year-forecasting#commentsNow Available: Cloud Analytics for Cloud Cost Managementhttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/now-available-cloud-analytics-cloud-cost-management
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>In the seven years that we have been running our own RightScale infrastructure in the cloud, our cloud costs have increased as business has grown. We saw that our customers were facing the same challenges as we were in attempting to get visibility into their rising cloud spend, especially when they had complex deployments that spanned public clouds, private clouds, and virtualized environments. So we created <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-analytics">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>&nbsp;to help them visualize, forecast, and optimize costs across their portfolios of public and private clouds.<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Getting a Handle on Your Cloud Costs</strong></span><br><br>Cloud Analytics is generally available starting today, and we are offering a <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">60-day free trial</a>&nbsp;that gives you visibility into cloud costs across your organization. With Cloud Analytics, you can:</p><ul><li>Manage costs for all the major public and private clouds that RightScale supports, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Rackspace, VMware vSphere, OpenStack, CloudStack, and more.</li><li>Visualize cloud costs for each application to understand growth patterns.</li><li>Determine cloud spend by business unit, department, and team.</li><li>Identify overconsumption and opportunities for cost savings.</li><li>Optimize costs by comparing costs for different instance sizes, reserved instances, and alternate clouds.</li><li>Run scenarios to forecast your future cloud costs.</li><li>Easily share your insights across your organization with automated reports.</li></ul><p>Cloud Analytics is one of several products available in the RightScale Cloud Portfolio Management suite, which includes <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/self-service">Self-Service</a>, Cloud Analytics, and <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-management">Cloud Management</a>. Together they enable your enterprise to grant defined self-service access to cloud resources, easily control your cloud spend, and more efficiently manage both your cloud and virtualized infrastructure.<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>What Cloud Analytics Customers Are Saying</strong></span></p><p>Since we first announced the private beta of Cloud Analytics in November 2013 and then followed with the public beta in March 2014, we’ve received phenomenal feedback from our customers.</p><p>Joe Emison, CTO of BuildFax and a <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/author-bio.asp?author_id=772">frequent contributor to <em>InformationWeek</em></a> on cloud-related topics, tells us that he has tried many of the existing cloud analytics tools on the market and that RightScale Cloud Analytics is the most useful when it comes to cloud cost management. In particular, he values the “automated emails that give me the right level of detail to help me understand quickly whether I am on budget and identify any unexpected cloud usage.”</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p style="padding: 0 40px;"><span style="font-size:20px;">"RightScale helps us avoid vendor lock-in with any one cloud provider, ensures that we have the very best in cloud managed services, and, with the help of RightScale Cloud Analytics, ensures that we are on the appropriate and most cost-effective cloud infrastructure at all times.”</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:16px;">Jeff Titus, GM of Digital Technology Solutions and Strategy for the VW Group of Audi of America</span></p><p><br>For large enterprises concerned with brand equity, the stakes are especially high with regard to managing cost-effective cloud infrastructure. Jeff Titus, the GM of Digital Technology Solutions and Strategy for the VW Group of Audi of America, explains that “Audi's customer expects nothing less than the best luxury brand experience, therefore the Audi digital ecosystem of services, applications, and products must exceed expectations at every level. We must constantly optimize and enrich our platform infrastructure to make that possible. This is why it is so important for us to work with RightScale. RightScale helps us avoid vendor lock-in with any one cloud provider, ensures that we have the very best in cloud managed services, and, with the help of RightScale Cloud Analytics, ensures that we are on the appropriate and most cost-effective cloud infrastructure at all times."<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>A More Complete Solution for IT Financial Management</strong></span><br><br>According to the <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/lp/2014-state-of-the-cloud-report">RightScale 2014 State of the Cloud Report</a>, fewer than a third of enterprises have defined processes for cloud cost management. Getting a handle on cloud costs and ROI and looking for concrete ways to optimize cloud spend are becoming of increasing interest to the C-suite. Tim Jones, CIO of MoneySuperMarket, says, "As a CIO, RightScale Cloud Analytics is just the sort of thing that I need to understand and reduce cloud costs. We look forward to using it to set expectations with C-level management and our board of directors on our future operating costs of private, hybrid, and public clouds."<br><br>Analysts also agree that reducing cloud costs is imperative for IT organizations.<br><br>A cloud economist at 451 Research, <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/qa-cloud-economist-and-451-research-analyst-dr-owen-rogers">Dr. Owen Rogers</a> says that "Integrated cloud analytics and management tools such as those from RightScale can help consumers understand this complex landscape and take actions to manage their cloud expenditure."<br><br>Because Cloud Analytics is fully integrated with RightScale Cloud Management, Cloud Analytics can serve the needs of users across your organization. You can use Cloud Analytics independently or in combination with Cloud Management to close the loop and take action on your insights.<br><br>Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst for cloud computing at Constellation Research, cautions against analytics tools that don’t provide mechanisms for taking actionable steps to reduce costs: "Beware the false analytics of vendors who offer data on cloud costs and usage, but don't tie that data to a derived action or guidance. RightScale Cloud Analytics is an important first step in integrating cloud analytics with cloud management across public and private clouds — a true analytics platform for cloud computing."<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Try Cloud Analytics for Free</strong></span><br><br>Cloud Analytics is the first solution that combines your historical usage with sophisticated forecasting to help you manage cloud costs across major public and private clouds and virtualized environments. Cloud Analytics also integrates with RightScale Cloud Management to allow you to take action on your insight and optimize your cloud usage. For a better way to visualize, forecast, and optimize your cloud costs, <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">get a free trial of RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>.<br><br>To learn more about the many features available in Cloud Analytics, check out these blog posts for screenshots and video tutorials:</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/2-simple-ways-stop-blowing-your-cloud-budget">2 Simple Ways to Stop Blowing Your Cloud Budget</a></li><li><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/analyze-scenarios-aws-reserved-instances-reduce-cloud-costs">Analyze Scenarios for AWS Reserved Instances to Reduce Cloud Costs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/cloud-cost-savings-understanding-why-cloud-spend-or-down">Cloud Cost Savings: Understanding Why Cloud Spend Is Up (or Down)</a></li><li><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/track-and-manage-your-private-cloud-costs-boss">Track and Manage Your Private Cloud Costs Like a Boss</a></li><li><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/keep-your-cloud-costs-down-through-internal-collaboration">Keep Your Cloud Costs Down Through Internal Collaboration</a></li><li><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/avoid-bill-shock-automated-cloud-cost-reports">Avoid Bill Shock with Automated Cloud Cost Reports</a></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-block_5" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Mon, 04 Aug 2014 12:57:51 +0000Hassan Hosseini402 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/now-available-cloud-analytics-cloud-cost-management#commentsHow to Empower DevOps to Manage Cloud Infrastructure and Costshttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/how-empower-devops-manage-cloud-infrastructure-and-costs
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>With&nbsp;IT organizations adopting <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/learn/cloud-operations/devops">DevOps</a> processes and practices to speed up application delivery, shorten release cycles, and improve quality, developers are looking for efficient ways to operationalize the management of their cloud infrastructure and control costs.<br><br><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-management">RightScale Cloud Management</a> enables&nbsp;DevOps (as well as IT managers and sysadmins) to deploy, manage, and govern applications in the cloud with a single pane of glass for both cloud and virtualized infrastructure. <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-analytics">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a> gives you visibility into your cloud usage and costs. By using the two solutions together, you can gain&nbsp;insight on your cloud usage and spend, identify opportunities to reduce cloud costs, and then take action on your insights.<br><br>Adding the Cloud Analytics widget to your Cloud Management dashboard&nbsp;gives you a quick view of your cloud usage each time you log into Cloud Management and enables you to easily navigate between the two:<br><br><img alt="DevOps Cloud Management" class="media-image" height="564" style="width: 750px; height: 382px;" width="1106" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/DevOps%20Cloud%20Management%203.png" /></p><p><br>To add the Cloud Analytics widget to your dashboard view, log in to Cloud Management (if you don’t have an account, <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/cloud-computing-management">sign up for a free trial</a><a href="http://www.rightscale.com/cloud-computing-management?campaign=701700000010L0r&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_content=How-to-Empower-DevOps" target="_blank">)</a>, select the Design menu, and click Widgets. Next click the "plus" button for the RightScale Cloud Analytics widget and click Save. You’ll see the Cloud Analytics in your Cloud Management dashboard:</p><p><img alt="DevOps Cost Management" class="media-image" height="584" style="width: 750px; height: 378px;" width="1159" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/DevOps%20Cost%20Management_0.png" /></p><p><br>You can choose to expand the Cloud Analytics widget or open it in a new tab.<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Summary</strong></span><br>By using Cloud Management and Cloud Analytics together to get full visibility into your cloud usage and costs, you can transform your IT shop from a cost center to a driver for strategic business investment. To bring simplicity to your cloud operations and get a comprehensive look into your entire organization’s cloud usage, <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/cloud-computing-management" target="_blank">sign up for a free trial of Cloud Management and Cloud Analytics</a>.<br>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Mon, 28 Jul 2014 17:00:33 +0000Hassan Hosseini400 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/how-empower-devops-manage-cloud-infrastructure-and-costs#comments2 Simple Ways to Stop Blowing Your Cloud Budgethttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/2-simple-ways-stop-blowing-your-cloud-budget
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Cloud computing has enabled organizations to deliver applications to market in record time. However, this agility can also result in larger than expected cloud bills when applications use more or larger instances than needed and when unused instances are left running. <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/products-and-services/products/cloud-analytics">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>&nbsp;provides an easy way for you to visualize cloud usage and costs across your entire organization, including actual spend and projected spend.</p><p>To help you keep your cloud spend in check and stay within budget, Cloud Analytics offers <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/avoid-bill-shock-automated-cloud-cost-reports">Scheduled Reports</a>, which deliver daily, weekly, and monthly updates on your cloud usage and cloud costs directly to your email inbox.<br><br>Budget Alerts go one step further by notifying your managers, finance teams, and other users when there are potential cost overruns. I will show you how to leverage Budget Alerts to set budgets — for a team, business unit, application, or any slice of your cloud usage — and to get notified when budgets are exceeded.<br><br>With Cloud Analytics, you can create two different types of Budget Alerts:<br><br>1. <strong>Alert based on <em>Actual Spend</em></strong><br>Set a monthly budget and get an alert if your budget is reached prior to the month end. This type of alert is most useful for steady workloads with little variability from month to month.</p><p>2. <strong>Alert based on <em>Projected Spend</em></strong><br>Set a monthly budget and get an alert if your projected monthly spend (based on current run rate) will exceed the budget. This alert lets you know that your budget will be exceeded before you incur additional costs.<br><br>Imagine these real-life scenarios:</p><ul><li>Your CFO wants to be alerted if the company-wide budget for cloud is projected to be exceeded.</li><li>A product manager has a set budget and needs to keep this strictly under control. She wants to be alerted if her current run rate shows that she will exceed the budget so that she can make adjustments.</li><li>Your VP of product development can create an budget alert for each product based on actual spend. If alerted, he can go to his product team to understand why the budget has been exceeded.</li></ul><p><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Set Cloud Budget Alerts for Specific Instances and Applications</strong></span><br><br>Use the Analyze feature to zoom in on the portion of cloud spend that you would like to be alerted on:<br><br><img alt="RightScale Cloud Analytics Analyze Feature" class="media-image" height="569" style="width: 750px; height: 577px;" width="739" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Analytics%20Analyze%20Feature_0.png" /><br><span style="font-size:14px;"><em>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </em></span><br>From here you can slice and dice your cloud spend until you see the data you wan<span style="font-size:14px;">t to get </span>alerted on. Then click Create and select Budget alert.<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Define Your Budget and Your Alert Options</strong></span><br><br><span style="font-size:14px;">You can choose whether to receive alerts on actual spend or projected spend.&nbsp;You can also choose to share alerts with other people in your organization<strong><em>. </em></strong>In this example, you will be notified if the monthly spend on this application is projected to exceed $1,800:</span><br><br><img alt="Cloud Budget Alert in RightScale Cloud Analytics" class="media-image" height="524" style="width: 750px; height: 497px;" width="791" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Analytics%20Budget%20Alert.png" /></p><p><br>If you receive an alert, you can click the button in the email to<span style="font-size:14px;"> go directly </span>to the segment of the budget with the issue and analyze the cause:<br><br><img alt="Cloud Cost Budget Alert Email in RightScale Cloud Analytics" class="media-image" height="559" style="width: 525px; height: 562px;" width="522" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/RightScale%20Cloud%20Analytics%20Budget%20Alert%20Email.png" /><br><span style="font-size:12px;"><em>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </em></span></p><p>To change or remove the alert, go to the Budget Alerts feature in the main menu.</p><p><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Summary</strong></span><br>Budget Alerts help you stay on top of your cloud spend and prevent cloud bill shock. By enabling you to quickly respond to current or potential cost overruns, they keep your cloud spend aligned with your budget. To more easily manage your cloud budget, <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial">get a free trial of&nbsp;RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>.</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-block_5" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Wed, 23 Jul 2014 14:57:59 +0000Hassan Hosseini398 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/2-simple-ways-stop-blowing-your-cloud-budget#commentsAnalyze Scenarios for AWS Reserved Instances to Reduce Cloud Costshttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/analyze-scenarios-aws-reserved-instances-reduce-cloud-costs
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</div> <!-- /.easy_social_box --><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"> <p>Purchasing Amazon Web Services <strong>(AWS) reserved instances </strong>(RIs) can be a smart cost-saving option versus buying on-demand instances. When you have sustained usage of specific instance types in a specific region and availability zone over a year or more, the cost of a reserved instance can be up to 65 percent lower than on-demand prices. AWS recently slashed both the upfront and hourly rates on 1-year and 3-year reserved instances, which we detailed in a blog post along with cost comparison charts of <a href="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/aws-responds-price-cuts-google-vs-aws-pricing-round-2">AWS vs. Google pricing</a>.<br><br>However, anyone who has attempted to decide when and whether to buy reserved instances for a variety of instance types in different availability zones knows how difficult the process can be. In addition, your reserved instances purchases should be based on your forecasted future usage, not just your past usage.<br><br>RightScale Cloud Analytics helps you visualize, analyze, and optimize cloud costs across public and private clouds as well as virtualized environments such as VMware.</p><p>In this blog and the accompanying video, I will show you how Cloud Analytics enables you to optimize cloud costs by:</p><ul><li>Determining the optimal number of RIs based on your forecasts.</li><li>Running what-if scenarios to calculate upfront and ongoing costs for RI purchases.</li></ul><p><iframe allowfullscreen="" allowtransparency="true" class="wistia_embed" mozallowfullscreen="" msallowfullscreen="" name="wistia_embed" oallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="//fast.wistia.net/embed/iframe/0sqaddcgpx" webkitallowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="441" width="600"></iframe><br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Determine the Number of RIs You Need</strong></span><br><br>To accurately forecast the&nbsp;number of RIs to purchase, start by reviewing your past usage. With Cloud Analytics, you can use the Analyze feature to filter down by Instance Types, Data Center (AZ), and Platform (OS) to see how many of each instance you have been running over the past few weeks and months.</p><p>In the screenshot below, I am analyzing the last three months of usage and cost as well as the minimum number of instances running on a daily basis. I can see that the minimum number of instances I am running is nine. If this workload will continue at the same level over the next year, I can purchase nine RIs to cover that minimum level.</p><p><br><img alt="Cloud computing costs" class="media-image" height="603" style="width: 750px; height: 519px;" width="871" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Analytics%20Analyze%20Feature.png" /><br><br>If you are using <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/trustedadvisor/" target="_blank">AWS Trusted Advisor</a>, you may get recommendations on the number of RIs to purchase. You can check the validity of the recommendations by using Cloud Analytics.<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Create What-If Scenarios to Calculate RI Costs and Savings</strong></span><br><br>Next, I can build a future-looking scenario based on historical usage. This will allow me to adjust the forecast and make RI purchase decisions based on planned usage and costs. You can add as many different RIs options as you like to a scenario (Light, Medium, Heavy, 1 Year, and 3 Year) and see the effects of the reservations on your future costs. I have selected "Heavy RI" in the screenshot below:<br><br><img alt="AWS reserved instance scenarios" class="media-image" height="644" style="width: 750px; height: 553px;" width="873" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.rightscale.com/blog/sites/default/files/Cloud%20Analytics%20AWS%20Heavy%20RI%20Scenario.png" /></p><p>From the Analyze page,&nbsp;I can use the Create button to evaluate my options through Scenario Builder. If needed, I can add growth patterns to adjust my usage forecast. I can then add RIs to the scenario and immediately see my upfront costs and my monthly costs. I can also see that my total costs will decline to $93,000 over the next year due to the purchase of 1-year RIs as compared to a run rate of around $213,000 in subsequent years where there are no RIs.<br><br><span style="font-size:18px;"><strong>Summary</strong></span><br><br>RightScale Cloud Analytics helps you create multiple what-if scenarios to forecast cloud usage and costs. You can identify how many reserved instances to purchase; evaluate the upfront and ongoing costs; and determine the total cost savings. With Cloud Analytics, you can optimize your AWS bill and realize significant savings on your cloud spend.<br><br>If you want to start analyzing the impact of RIs on your cloud spend right now,&nbsp;get a free trial of <a href="https://www.rightscale.com/cloud-analytics-free-trial" target="_blank">RightScale Cloud Analytics</a>.<br>&nbsp;</p><div class="drupal-embed" delta="ai_blog_ads-block_5" embed_type="block" module="views"></div><p>&nbsp;</p> </div></div></div>Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:52:33 +0000Hassan Hosseini396 at http://www.rightscale.com/bloghttp://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-cost-analysis/analyze-scenarios-aws-reserved-instances-reduce-cloud-costs#comments